I was so impressed with this giant art gallery that is Burning Man, I told myself it was time to create large art pieces. The festival had motivated me to learn how to weld and while my work is a dumpster diver's dream for art materials I soon enough came upon what was to become:

This was my first large piece and it hung above the bar of a massive warehouse party. It was our own mini Burning Man in the middle of Brooklyn! And I was really proud of what I had achieved.

The letters that make up Empire came from a little TV show known as Boardwalk Empire, have you heard of it? They were going to the trash, to be dumped like some old rag doll nobody wanted!!! The light bulb turned on bright inside my head, I need to snatch up that rubbish before anyone else did...

I thought we could use them to have a party called “Empire of Love” with a giant sign as it's centerpiece. Well, it ended up at a much bigger event with a few thousand people! Our parties never reached much more than 500 people, so you can imagine my excitement!

The sign stands or hangs 5 feet tall, 12 feet long and is about 1 foot thick. First we cleaned the letters, painted them fluorescent pink, and covered the 137 holes with opaque water bottle caps collected on film sets. We then gorilla taped the ferry lights (Christmas lights) behind each bottle cap. All the letters were screwed onto a couple pieces of wood. “Of Love” and the heart are made of Electroluminescent Wire which is basically just a thin and very flexible neon tube. I drew the the letters and the heart as a guide for the wire on a piece of plywood. We than had to drill tiny holes on either sides of the pencil line to fit a small piece of bailing wire that got wrapped around the El-wire to create the shape I had drawn. I think that was what took the longest!

The original idea on paper

150 bottle caps collected in 3 days... so much waste in Hollywood, and the bottles were still half full

Cheap hot glue guns and 137 holes to fill...

Disco Bike landing a hand, thanks budy!

Fairy lights test

Turned out the old school lights worked a lot better than LEDs

Fabricated the frame out of more material salvaged from the dumster

proof of Love well hung!

My best friend Davo on the El-wire job

The final product in pitch dark!

If you really want to know what is inside this Coconut, take a look at my #HumansOfSteemit entry HERE.

~ QUOTE OF THE MONTH (@Olawalium) ~
I want love to be the trend and laziness to be a thing of the past.

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